


Nature vs Man

by Augment



Category: One Piece
Genre: Fire, Friendship, Gen, it took me years to understand why people write poems about this country, just an atmosphere piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:08:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24957385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Augment/pseuds/Augment
Summary: Robin explores some old ruins. Zoro goes with her. It could, potentially, be a very peaceful way to spend the day.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 91





	Nature vs Man

**Author's Note:**

> Don’t ask me where this falls in the canon timeline. Sometime after Whole Cake.

The island is fairly large, and decidedly tropical. According to the villagers at their previous pitstop, it's also a good source of fresh water and food, so the Straw Hats decide to drop anchor and restock their stores.

Robin had also learned, after a few general inquiries about the island's topology, that there are some small ruins of unknown providence an hour or so inland. Robin’s archaeological curiosity is piqued, and exploring this particular small section of the past would be a welcome diversion from recent events and the ongoing stress of poneglyphs, pirate emperors, and run-away bridegrooms. So with the crew foraging close to the shoreline, Robin requests a few hours leave from the ship.

“Sure thing, Robin,” Luffy agrees easily. And then: “Zoro, go with her.”

It is unmistakably An Order. Zoro looks up from where he’s helping Franky hoist water barrels, and the swordsman’s eyes lock with Luffy’s. A beat, and Zoro shrugs, but slow, the ripple of movement tugging and pulling the muscles across his neck and shoulders. The simple gesture combines acquiescence with a display of bestial-like power – a reminder.

Then Zoro grabs his swords, and jumps down off the ship to join Robin on her hike. Luffy, seemingly satisfied, turns away, and Zoro gestures to Robin, _lead on_.

Robin chooses not to comment, and she and Zoro walk in silence for twenty minutes. The sandy beach transitions to mangrove, then the ground gets firmer and the trees denser, and they enter the rainforest proper. The air grows heavy with water, humid and human-body-temperature, no wind. Robin loses the distinction between the edges of her skin and the air surrounding her, breathing the forest in and sweating it out again.

The forest smells earthy and damp, sometimes with a little spice, or something citrus-like. Cedar. Partially decomposed life-cycle leaves rustle beneath their feet, as they trip over the ubiquitous roots. Vines swoop overhead, ferns kiss their calves and ankles. It's peaceful, despite the constant background noise provided by insects and birds. The ground slopes slightly upward, and in the gaps between birdcalls, Robin thinks she can hear burbling water.

They stop to rest by silent mutual agreement next to the trunk of a giant felled tree. Tilting her head up, angling her hat out of the way, Robin can still trace the swathe the tree must have cut through nearby foliage as it fell, breaking branches and dragging vines on its way down.

Zoro leans against the fallen tree trunk, gazing around. He’s not breathing hard – the terrain isn’t especially difficult – but there's a fine sheen of sweat on his exposed skin. Robin feels similarly damp. Air like soup, saturated with water, and still dehydration would probably be their biggest problem if something went wrong.

Robin passes Zoro one of the water skins she had the foresight to bring. He nods in thanks, and takes a large drink, then several smaller ones. He returns the water to Robin, who slakes her own thirst. There's silence for thirty seconds, then:

“I do not anticipate that this venture will be dangerous,” she says, spoken carefully.

Zoro looks confused at the non-sequitur, then, understanding, snorts. “Luffy trusts you,” he says, and there’s something ironic underlying his words.

Robin digests the statement. Luffy trusts her, which of course she knows, and it necessarily follows that Zoro trusts her. Meaning Luffy knows her strength, as does Zoro, and for something simple like this she doesn’t need protection. And Luffy trusts her to ask for help, if she needed it. She learned her lesson at Enies Lobby, that the danger ahead concerning her skill with reading poneglyphs will be faced _together_ , trusting her to have more sense than their kind but self-sacrificing cook-

Ah.

Luffy hadn’t sent Zoro with Robin to protect her. He had sent Zoro away from Sanji. Just for a little while. Managing the tensions that had arisen recently.

As if Luffy wouldn’t have gone after Sanji, helped him, faced entire armies for his crew. As if he wouldn’t. Which Zoro knows very well, as does Robin, and which Sanji should have known.

On one hand, Zoro will take Luffy’s side over anyone else, and Luffy and the crew walked into shocking danger because of Sanji. On the other hand, Luffy has forgiven Sanji, brought him home, safe.

Difficult.

Well, Robin has faith that things will work out. Zoro’s eyes are closed, his head tilted back and exposing his neck to the sky. His chest rises with a deep breath intake, and flattens with a slow exhale. There’s something about the mess of the rainforest, the closeness of the air, the lack of distance between the individual and the trees and trees and trees. It invites meditation.

And Robin doesn’t even particularly like forests.

They take another few minutes of rest, then continue onward. Robin is following directions given to her by a troupe of small boys on the previous island, who apparently like to play among the ruins when they visit. She doesn’t hold out much hope for the preservation of the historical record, but the forest has probably done more cumulative damage to mere human enterprise than any amount of small children.

Something about the way the trees cluster together changes; newer growth, and more gaps in the canopy overhead. Robin knows they’ve reached their destination five minutes before Zoro trips over a large stone something, definitely man-made. Zoro flails inelegantly, nearly snapping the slim trunk of a juvenile pencil cedar in an effort not to faceplant into the leaf litter.

Once upon a time, the stone statue would have stood upright at the entrance to something, or perhaps as a guardian of the road, or maybe simply as decoration. Short of determining that it was likely carved using crude stone tools, Robin can’t tell much from it. It’s not even clear what the statue is supposed to be; half-buried, eroded by the elements, most of the detail is lost.

They continue onwards, emerging into a small clearing. The overgrowth is less here, yet to fully cover the remains of several small stone dwellings. Robin can already see that most of the ruins are in poor shape. She uses the branches overhead to sprout out a few eyes and get an overview – there's an outline of a collection of huts and larger buildings, but only a few walls stand, and those that do are more than half eroded.

Zoro's tactic is to climb a nearby tree.

Robin crouches down to inspect a crumbling pile of bricks. They're clearly baked mud, with plant fibres mixed in. Rain and time has played a strong role in the disintegration of the structures.

Robin walks through the area, her path tracing the perimeter of the clearing and her overhead eyes directing her to points of interest. Occasionally she stops and pokes around in a patch of dirt or pile of debris.

Several metres behind her Zoro slithers back down the tree, snapping several branches on the way down.

"What is this, a village?" he calls out to her.

Robin shrugs, rather than indulge in a lecture on the vagaries of archaeological process and biases in interpretation of the historical record.

"I wonder how old," Zoro muses, and pokes at a stone lump with his foot.

Robin leaves him to it, and continues her tour of the village. There's not enough time to do more than have a cursory look, but Robin uses her devil fruit judiciously and manages to uncover several small items of everyday life.

Half an hour later she's found a flat area within one of the better preserved buildings, and is inspecting her finds more closely when Zoro wanders up.

“Find anything interesting?”

“Not in the grand scheme of things,” Robin says, showing Zoro her collection.

Zoro moves his finger gently through the pottery shards Robin's laid out. “A bowl?”

“Most likely part of a larger urn, for food, or water,” Robin says. “There’s still remnants of a glaze on some of the pieces, see? It’s on the concave part of the piece, not the convex, which means the glaze covered the inside. Perhaps as a way of waterproofing the vessel.”

Zoro nods, and picks up another object. He brings it close to his face, squinting at it. “This looks like a toy top.”

“I would say that’s accurate,” Robin says. “There are faint marks of grooves on the handle–”

“For the string,” Zoro fills in.

“Yes!” Robin says, happy to share in discovery. “The string has decayed, obviously. The same design has been used for centuries, in many other places. Perhaps a sign of trading between nearby islands, or maybe just coincidence.”

Zoro puts the top carefully back down. “A kid would’ve loved that.”

“Yes,” Robin says softly. “It would have been a treasure to them.” She smooths a hand over the bits and pieces, and then steps back. There's no point bringing the items with her; they can stay here for the ghosts and future explorers.

"I found something," Zoro says. "Looks like a cellar."

That, Robin finds very exciting. An underground room would have been protected from the elements, and will at least be mostly intact.

Zoro leads the way to an edge of the clearing, picking carefully over the scattered bricks. He makes a couple of detours, muttering to himself, but eventually manages to locate the find.

It's a hole in the ground, mostly obscured by a luxuriant shrub. The shrub itself is partially crushed, which leads Robin to suspect that Zoro found the cellar by falling into it.

Zoro gestures towards the hole. "Careful," he says. "It's slippery."

Robin suppresses a smile, and climbs carefully down. It's a very small cellar, probably only used for storage, somewhere cool and out of the elements. It's also empty, disappointingly.

"There's something on the wall," Zoro calls from above. He pushes the shrub out of the way, and the sunlight slants down to illuminate one of the cellar walls.

"Oh," Robin says, all absorbed interest. "A mural."

The wall seems to have been plastered, and then painted with a scene, though the figures and symbolism has faded. The plaster has partially crumbled, it's dusty, and the light isn't very good, but still Robin presses her face close, paces back and forth, uses a small mirror in her pocket to direct the sunlight onto areas of interest. She will never stop being fascinated by the small efforts of humans that somehow resonate long into the future.

She loses track of time as she tries to determine exactly what the picture is showing. There are several human figures, and some animals. Definitely trees and water, on the left. But the figures move away from something on the right, where the mural is badly damaged, and she can't quite make it out.

“Robin,” Zoro calls her name from the hole in the ceiling.

“Hmm?” She acknowledges him, but is too distracted to turn – there is something familiar to the shape – if only she could remember-

“Robin,” Zoro says with more urgency, appearing at her elbow.

“Oh!” Robin says, memory slotting into place. “Wildfire!”

“Yeah,” Zoro says, “we need to get out of here.”

Robin blinks at him, as he beckons her away. She follows him up, accepting a helping hand to climb up though she hardly needs it, and only then notices the smell of smoke, persistent in the air, that wasn’t there before.

The air has become hazy, and the forest strangely quiet.

“It’s fire,” Robin says.

“Yeah, I gathered that,” Zoro says. “I don’t know how far away, but we should get back to the ship before we’re trapped.”

"No,” Robin says, as they start walking, with speed, back the way they came. “I mean the mural. That’s what the picture was showing. The forest was on one side, and on the opposite was stylised flames. I wonder if this is cyclical.” Robin takes a deep breath, both from exertion and excitement.

The smell of smoke is much stronger now, and the wind has picked up as well.

“Right,” Zoro says, and veers in the wrong direction.

“This way,” Robin redirects him by spouting a hand from a nearby tree. She takes the lead, and they make haste in the direction of the shore. They find themselves picking up speed as they go, as the wind, warmed to an uncomfortable degree, hits their backs.

“It started quickly,” Zoro says, panting. There are flecks of grey ash in his hair.

“And it moves quicker,” Robin says. “We cannot let it overtake us.”

The leaves stream ahead of them, buffeted by the wind that's carrying smoke and embers towards them. They're moving faster and with less grace, so it takes more effort to clamber over logs and push aside foliage. Robin helps as much as she can with additional hands and arms, but every time she looks up there's more forest ahead of them.

“Do you think the fire wiped the village out?” Zoro asks from behind her, as Robin takes the lead in climbing over the same fallen tree they stopped to rest by before. Even on its side, the trunk is almost as tall as them, and now Robin's looking for it, she can see how the bark was blacked from the previous fire, or maybe the one before that.

“They survived long enough to record it," Robin says. She creates a series of hand- and foot-holds for Zoro with her devil fruit. "Maybe that was their purpose: to bear witness, and then perish."

"Great," Zoro mutters, as he clambers up after Robin.

On the other side of the trunk, Robin stops to assess the right direction. As she breathes, the acrid smoke burns the back of her throat. Zoro breaks into a coughing fit beside her.

"Do you have a handkerchief?" he asks, pulling his bandana free from his arm.

She does – she nods. A good idea. They both tie the fabric around their faces. The smoke is much thicker now, and making it hard to see, like a fog. She's immensely thankful for her devil fruit, which gives her eyes above the canopy.

She grabs Zoro's wrist, because they can't lose sight of each other. She's suddenly made uncomfortable by the knowledge that without her, Zoro would be far worse off.

"Let's go," Zoro says, and she nods, leading them both at a fair clip the rest of the way.

They eventually break the tree line at the shore, Robin only letting go of Zoro's wrist when they're in sight of the ocean. Removing their improvised face masks, they jog down the beach to where the Sunny is docked, several hundred metres away.

Robin hears a shout, and she can just make out Usopp pointing towards them from the ship's prow.

Sanji and Luffy are standing on the sand, next to the ship, as she and Zoro reach it. They look like they've just been interrupted in the middle of a tense conversation; Luffy's grin and Sanji's obvious relief when they see them tells Robin what it was about.

"We’re getting out of here," Luffy says without preamble, and uses his devil fruit to sling himself onboard the ship.

Zoro wades into the shallows and climbs up the rope ladder – Robin makes her own out of a series of spare hands – and Sanji follows Zoro. They've weighed anchor and are heading away from the island in a matter of minutes. Even as they gain more distance, the wind blows a soft grey ash towards them.

“Fucking hell,” Sanji remarks.

Watching from the ship's deck, Robin can't see the flames, just a thick cloud of dark smoke enveloping the forest and wisping out to the ocean.

“Thanks, Robin,” Zoro says.

Robin turns to look at him, sees reflected fear in his eyes from their close brush with the rage of nature, and smiles in acknowledgement.

"You're damn right," Sanji interjects, fired up. "If it wasn't for Robin your scrawny ass would be literal toast."

Zoro rounds on him, like a switch has been flipped. "First of all, my ass is not scrawny. Second of all, fuck you! How was I supposed to know the damn forest would catch fire?!"

"I'd bet my right fucking foot the fire got so close because _you_ ," Sanji jabs his finger into Zoro's chest, "got lost, _endangering_ Robin-"

"Sanji-" Robin attempts to interrupt.

The smoke haze has spread several kilometres around the island; the ship still hasn't cleared it. It makes everything look overcast, and it's turned the sun into a flat red circle, a glaring eye, or portent.

Zoro grabs Sanji's finger and pushes him backward. " _Yeah?_ " he sneers. "You want to talk about _putting people in danger_?

"What the _hell_ is that supposed to mean?" Sanji yanks his hand out of Zoro's grip, face scrunched up. His foot is twitching, like he's going to swing it around at Zoro's head.

"What the fuck do you think?" Zoro says, in a supercilious tone perfectly calculated to enrage Sanji. The hands resting on his sword hilts looks less casual, and more preparatory.

There's a loud crack from the island, like lightning. Both Zoro and Sanji whip towards it, but there's nothing to be seen.

"I think a tree exploded," Robin observes.

"Oh, _fantastic_ ," Sanji drawls. "We'll just add that to the creative ways you could have died."

Zoro whirls back around, tense and infuriated.

" _Enough_ ," Luffy barks, before Zoro can say anything.

Both Zoro and Sanji tilt their heads towards Luffy, though they don't take their eyes off each other.

"Sanji, Robin and Zoro are safe," Luffy says. "So you don't need to worry. Zoro, _let it go_."

Zoro carries his scowl for a few more seconds, but then relaxes, obviously and deliberately. Sanji scoffs, but likewise backs off.

"You were worried," Zoro says to Sanji, with a suspicion of a smirk.

"Fucking _duh_ ," Sanji mutters, embarrassed. "Knowing you, your dumbass would end up walking the wrong way off a cliff."

Robin says, "That's sweet," at the same time as Zoro says, "That's stupid," which sets Sanji off again and they go at each other, but it's clearly just roughhousing this time, and Luffy's laughing colours the background.

Robin turns to watch the island recede completely into the distance. No doubt in time the plants will recover, grow, and go back to blanketing the island. She wonders idly what quirk of the Grand Line causes a rainforest to catch fire, and how long it will be before the cycle brings it back around again.

By the time they reach the next island, several days later, the smoke has cleared. Or more accurately, they've sailed out of it; Nami says that the wind will probably continue to carry the smoke several hundred kilometres before it dissipates.

On the beach, Robin finds another mark of the power of nature. There are thousands of black flecks of burnt wood and vegetable matter, carried from the fire island and pushed up onto the sand by the sea, causing curious wave patterns made of charcoal.

Robin takes a piece of the charcoal, and uses it to record what she remembers of the mural, the little village, and the small items that formed the lives of the people that lived there.


End file.
